


Untitled (What's Gone Wrong)

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody thinks they know what Zito's problem is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (What's Gone Wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 2004.

Yeah, okay.

San Francisco fog in July. Comes right in through the front door without knocking and kicks its feet up on the coffee table and gets sneaker prints on the newspaper. It’s thick enough to pocket.

“He’s overthrowing his fastball,” Huddy says, sitting up too straight to keep the weight off his side.

Mulder snorts and pushes his thumb through the spill of salt on the table, stretched forward on the couch with his arm on his knee and his chin on his arm. “How can you overthrow something that only goes 88 miles an hour to begin with?” There’s salt on his fingertips, on the side of his wrist.

“Same as you overthrow something that goes 98 miles an hour,” Hudson answers, and out under the quiet arching trees of the street there’s a crazy guy screaming about the sky, the sky’s disappeared, something like that.

Mulder sits up and slumps back, licks at his fingers, turning his hand back and forth in the jaundiced light. “He’s not overthrowing it, it stays up. It’s a fucking batting practice pitch.”

Hudson’s drinking Jameson’s straight, because tough motherfuckers don’t water their whiskey. Hudson would rather have a 5-7 record than be on the DL.

They get off the subject and talk about Todd Hamilton and Dennis Eckersley for a little while.

(you’ll pull him aside. You’ll fall back from the others, get cut off. You’ll corner him in the next hotel room, the next visitor’s clubhouse, the next dark alley. You’ll have your hand on his back, maybe your thumb hooked in one of his belt loops. He’ll be giving you questioning looks and weaving on his feet. He’ll cut a perfect form under the streetlamp, and you’ll push him back to where there’s no light.)

“He misses Rick,” Bradford says, roughing a ball up between his palms, tossing it back and forth to himself.

“Yeah?” Lehr says encouragingly, leaning forward over his knees, but they ignore him because he’s only a month up from the minors and still wears ‘bush league’ on a sandwich board slung around his neck.

Duchscherer pours about half a bag of sunflower seeds into his mouth, his cheek poked out like a squirrel. “I don’t know, man. It’s not like he’s changed anything, with Young. Pre-game routine or anything. All he’s doing different is standing taller out of the stretch.”

“And that’s only ‘cause he’s jealous of Mulder’s pickoff move,” Mecir adds. They squint against the sun, the bullpen overhang slicing across their legs so their shoes are flashed white.

“Yeah,” Lehr agrees, invisible.

“I mean, when you’re that good, shouldn’t matter who’s the pitching coach. Curt’s doing awesome.” Duke pauses. “At least, for the rest of us.” He holds out his hand for Bradford to flip him the ball, and they pop it up and down the line of the bench, snapped off their biceps and backhanded under their knees.

They don’t say anything for half an inning, then Mecir wonders hesitantly, “You think they’ll make him a set-up man like they been talking about? Put him out here with us?”

Lehr, bored and not really paying attention, says, “Yeah,” and they all turn to glare at him, Lehr blinking back innocently.

(he’ll not really want to follow you, but you’ll give him no choice. You’ll kick at his heels and keep him moving in front of you. He’ll trip over a crack in the cement and you’ll snag an arm around his waist to steady him. He’ll shove you away, stark in the planes of his face and angry with you because he’s angry with everybody on the team, these days. You know him better than anyone, but that’s just the ace up your sleeve.)

“It’s really just one or two pitches. That get him in trouble. Keeps giving up home runs. He’s never given up this many home runs,” Chavez claims and changes the channel. Some kind of tunneled wind and the branches are scratching at the window glass.

Harden shakes his head and steals the remote back. Pretty soon, Harden’ll be the best pitcher on the staff, but not yet. “It’s not just the long ball, dude. Have you seen his walk to strikeout ratio? ‘Cause, you know, Christ.”

Crosby’s sitting on the floor by the stereo, making a mix tape. Empty CD cases are scattered around him like landmines, and he makes careful note of each song added, his lips twisted around the pen cap. He looks up, green as center field. “This feels like bad luck. Figuring out what’s wrong with him.”

Harden and Chavez exchange a look. Rookies. “How can it be bad luck if he’s already doing bad?” Chavvy asks, hiking an eyebrow up.

Crosby shrugs. “Still.”

Chavez considers that, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Harden’s got his mouth cocked slightly open like a kid, shiny-eyed. All kinds of luck, in this game, all different kinds. Chavez nods, allowing it, “Yeah.”

Crosby smiles sadly and puts on his headphones.

(there’ll be stray cats and dial tones ringing high in your ears, and you’ll stand in front of him. It’ll be moonlit dim and motherfucking cold. From way far off, foghorns will call back and forth to each other and you’ll think about Morse code. He’ll lean back against the wall and regard you cautiously, bruised eyes and hair-thin lines at the corners of his mouth that weren’t there last year. He’ll say ‘what’ so quiet you won’t actually hear it. There will be a smell of rust in the air, suicidal leaves waiting for autumn.)

“He broke up with that chick,” Hatteberg offers. “Maybe he’s all . . . heartbroken or whatever.”

Dye rolls his eyes. “As if he’s got the attention span to be heartbroken.” On the concrete floor of the dugout, small white cups crumple like car wrecks, and they’ve picked the green paint clean off the wooden bench.

“Anyway,” Chavez interjects, shouldering in between Mulder and Crosby. “He said she didn’t even give good head. So no great loss.”

Smirking, Dye scuffs his spikes on the stone. “Are you saying that what he needs is someone to give him a blowjob?”

Chavez grins and touches his index finger to his nose. “Not it,” he answers, and they all quickly follow suit, except for Mulder who’s laughing too hard to breathe.

(you’ll be shaking from the cold and your hands will skitter on his shoulders. He’ll have three days’ worth of stubble and his hair will finally have grown out enough to brush the tips of his ears. You’ll ask him why this is happening, what it is that he’s lost, and he’ll duck his eyes away and lie to you, he’ll say he’s fine, just like he always does.)

“He can’t find the plate with a fucking map,” Miller says, shirtless in the locker room with a towel around his neck. “He’s throwing fine, he just can’t locate worth shit.”

Macha nods and squints at the lineup card. “He hasn’t been establishing the change early enough.”

Miller runs his hand through his short hair and flicks the water off his fingers. His bare shoulder is pressed flat to cool metal. His knees are so sore he’s frankly surprised to find himself still standing. “He’s too spooked to throw it. When he misses with the change, it ends up in the fucking bleachers.”

Macha sighs, scratches something out with his golf pencil. He taps the arm of his glasses with his finger, looking as benevolently wise as his white hair would seem to promise. “Tell him he’s gonna take a session tomorrow before BP.”

Miller crosses his arms over his chest. “He’s not gonna like that, Mach. He doesn’t like throwing the day after he starts.”

Macha peers at him over his glasses. “I’m not really interested in what he does or doesn’t like at this point, Damian. Tell him he’s throwing tomorrow and if he’s got a problem, he can deal with me, and if he doesn’t want to deal with me, he can deal with Billy.” He studies his lineup card some more, frustrated lines on his face. “Goddamn it. We’re half a team right now.”

(you’ll tell him to stop fucking lying and he’ll get pissed off at you. You’ll welcome it because he’s been numb for too long, he won’t let himself in far enough to see what’s happening. You’ll keep asking ‘what is it, man, what’s wrong,’ and he’ll keep getting angrier, that brutal scrawl in his eyes. He’ll insist, ‘I’m fucking fine, leave me the fuck alone,’ and you won’t let him go. You’ll catch your hands on his arms and he’ll throw you off. You’ll press him down and he’ll sneer at you and it’ll be a sight to see.)

“He’s worried about being traded,” Byrnes suggests, kicking his legs in the pool. The water’s bobbing with flotation devices and Nerf balls and plastic ships and infielders.

Mulder, most of the way reclined in a deck chair, lifts his head and says sleepily, “He’s not gonna be traded. No fucking way.”

Byrnes twists to face him. “Yeah, but he’s worried about it, it’s messing him up.”

Hatteberg drifts over, clinging to the edge, wet handprints on the cement. His soaked hair gleams copper, and he says caustically, “Being traded isn’t the end of the world, guys.”

Mulder pushes up his sunglasses to better trade a disbelieving look with Byrnes, then drops his head back down. Maybe Scott knows what he’s talking about, maybe he doesn’t.

Through the tint of his sunglasses, the sky is flat and bleached, the birds like dashes of ink, and Mulder’s only warm ‘cause he’s lying in the sun.

(and you’ll keep asking him and he’ll keep lying, his voice getting louder and higher, cracking. There’ll come a point when it’s either beat the shit out of you or finally tell you the truth, and your hands will be in fists on his chest. Those fucking dark eyes of his and you’ll look for the man he was once, the man you should have sworn to protect with your body. There’s not a stitch of this that is your fault, but when he breaks down at last, all you’ll feel is guilt like chalk dust in the back of your throat.)

“Just because you’re good once doesn’t mean you’re gonna be good forever,” Hudson states, punctuating it by clapping his empty glass on the bar. “Some guys just lose it.”

Chavez shakes his head. “But sometimes . . . I mean, sometimes it’s like nothing’s changed. He’ll go out there and it’ll be 2002 all over again. If he’s lost it, shouldn’t he have . . . lost it entirely?”

Huddy sighs, watches the reflections move around in the mirror over the bar. His fingers are tapping on his cell phone, about to call home. “Trust him not to do anything the typical way.”

Chavvy nods. “It’s worse. How sometimes he’ll be so good and you think, there, good, see. But it doesn’t last. Fucking kills me, to see him like that.”

Hudson places his hand on Chavez’s shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. “He’ll be okay, man.”

Chavez looks at him with futile strength. “You sure about that, Timmy?”

Hudson doesn’t answer, goes to the back hallway to call his daughters and tell them good night.

(when his defenses fall, he’ll hang on to you like he’s drowning, and you’ll loop an arm around his waist, hold him up. His face will be against your neck and you’ll feel him trying not to cry, creeping damp and warm on your skin. You’ll pull each word out of him with the force of your hands, the breath of your lungs, you’ll make him tell you what went wrong and at last you’ll know everything he’s kept hidden. He’s gotten stuck inside his own head and it’s not as clean a place as he’s always thought it was. You’ll let him throw it all down at your feet, you’ll let him shatter before you. You’ll push a hand through his hair and with your mouth against his ear, finally, finally, you’ll say, ‘nothing so far gone that we can’t get it back. Nothing you can take from me that I won’t let you have.’ And he’ll lift his head off your shoulder and his eyes will be sunlight-on-glass bright. He’ll breathe out and he’ll be shaking too, so goddamn cold. If it means you on your knees, if it means your body fractured on the highway, if it means your heart wiped out forever, if it means all your power and all your hope of redemption, then yeah. Yeah, okay.)

He’s sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter and his knees drawn up. The refracted streetlight is fanning rainbows out in the puddles, and he holds his left hand out, wet with color, ultraviolet. He is motionless with his hand extended, and the shadows huddle around his knuckles, the hollows of his wrist. He watches his hand glow like neon in the darkness, his eyes huge and scared.

THE END


End file.
